The Vagabond in Literature Part 4

"First came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon dull? Fishy were his eyes, torpedinous was his manner; and his main idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon-from which you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze, under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was an idea of mere hostility to the moon. . . . His wrath did not pa.s.s into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; and uneasy fumbling with the idea-like that of an old superannuated dog who longs to worry, but cannot for want of teeth."

A clever piece of a.n.a.lytical satire, if you like, but not humorous so much as witty. Incongruity, unexpectedness, belongs to the essence of humour. Here there is that cunning display of congruity between the old dog and the Doctor which the wit is so adroit in evolving.

Similarly in the essay on "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts,"

the style of clever extravaganza adopted in certain pa.s.sages is witty, certainly, but lacks the airy irresponsibility characterizing humour.

Sometimes he indulges in pure clowning, which is humorous in a heavy-handed way. But grimacing humour is surely a poor kind of humour.

Without going into any dismal academic discussion on Wit and Humour, I think it is quite possible to differentiate these two offsprings of imagination, making Wit the intellectual brother of the twain.

a.n.a.lytical minds naturally turn to wit, by preference: Impressionistic minds to humour. d.i.c.kens, who had no gift for a.n.a.lysis, and whose writings are a series of delightful unreflective, personal impressions, is always humorous, never witty. Reflective writers like George Eliot or George Meredith are more often witty than humorous.

I do not rate De Quincey's wit very highly, though it is agreeably diverting at times, but it was preferable to his humour.

The second point to be noted against Dr. j.a.pp is his reference to Coleridge. No one would claim Wordsworth as a humorist, but Coleridge cannot be dismissed with this comfortable finality. Perhaps he was more witty than humorous; he also had an a.n.a.lytic mind of rarer quality even than De Quincey's, and his _Table Talk_ is full of delightful flashes.

But the amusing account he gives of his early journalistic experiences and the pleasant way in which he pokes fun at himself, can scarcely be compatible with the a.s.sertion that he had "no humour."

Indeed, it was this quality, I think, which endeared him especially to Lamb, and it was the absence of this quality which prevented Lamb from giving that personal attachment to Wordsworth which he held for both Coleridge and Hazlitt.

But the comparative absence of humour in De Quincey is another characteristic of Vagabondage. Humour is largely a product of civilization, and the Vagabond is only half-civilized. I can see little genuine humour in either Hazlitt or De Quincey. They had wit to an extent, it is true, but they had this despite, not because, of their Vagabondage. Th.o.r.eau, notwithstanding flashes of shrewd American wit, can scarcely be accounted a humorist. Whitman was entirely devoid of humour. A lack of humour is felt as a serious deficiency in reading the novels of Jefferies; and the airy wit of Stevenson is scarcely full-bodied enough to rank him among the humorists.

This deficiency of humour may be traced to the characteristic att.i.tude of the Vagabond towards life, which is one of eager curiosity. He is inquisitive about its many issues, but with a good deal of the child's eagerness to know how a thing happened, and who this is, and what that is. Differing in many ways, as did Borrow and De Quincey, we find the same insatiable curiosity; true, it expressed itself differently, but there is a basic similarity between the impulse that took Borrow over the English highways and gave him that zest for travel in other countries, and the impulse that sent De Quincey wandering over the various roads of intellectual and emotional inquiry. Th.o.r.eau's main reason for his two years' sojourn in the woods was one of curiosity. He "wanted to know"

what he could find out by "fronting" for a while the essential facts of life, and he left, as he says, "for as good a reason as I went there.

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live." In other words, inquisitiveness inspired the experiment, and inquisitiveness as to other experiments induced him to terminate the Walden episode.

Now, in his own way, De Quincey was possibly the most inquisitive of all the Vagabonds. The complete absence of the imperative mood in his writings has moved certain moralists like Carlyle to impatience with him.

There is a fine moral tone about his disposition, but his writings are engagingly unmoral (quite different, of course, from immoral). He has called himself "an intellectual creature," and this happy epithet exactly describes him. He collected facts, as an enthusiast collects curios, for purposes of decoration. He observed them, a.n.a.lysed their features, but almost always with a view to aesthetic comparisons.

And to understand De Quincey aright one must follow him in his mult.i.tudinous excursions, not merely rest content with a few fragments of "impa.s.sioned prose," and the avowedly autobiographic writings. For the autobiography extends through the sixteen volumes of his works. The writings, no doubt, vary in quality; in many, as in the criticism of German and French writers, acute discernment and astounding prejudices jostle one another. But this is no reason for turning impatiently away.

Indeed, it is an additional incentive to proceed, for they supply such splendid psychological material for ill.u.s.trating the temperament and tastes of the writer. And this may confidently be said: There is "fundamental brainwork" in every article that De Quincey has written.

V

What gives his works their especial attraction is not so much the a.n.a.lytic faculty, interesting as it is, or the mystical turn of mind, as in the piquant blend of the two. Thus, while he is poking fun at Astrology or Witchcraft, we are conscious all the time that he retains a sneaking fondness for the occult. He delights in dreams, omens, and coincidences. He reminds one at times of the lecturer on "Superst.i.tions," who, in the midst of a brilliant a.n.a.lysis of its futility and absurdity, was interrupted by a black cat walking on to the platform, and was so disturbed by this portent that he brought his lecture to an abrupt conclusion.

On the whole the Mystic trampled over the Logician. His poetic imagination impresses his work with a rich inventiveness, while the logical faculty, though subsidiary, is utilized for giving form and substance to the visions.

It is curious to contrast the stateliness of De Quincey's literary style, the elaborate full-dress manner, with the extreme simplicity of the man.

One might be tempted to add, surely here the style is _not_ the man. His friends have testified that he was a gentle, timid, shrinking little man, and abnormally sensitive to giving offence; and to those whom he cared for-his family, for instance-he was the incarnation of affection and tenderness.

Yet in the writings we see another side, a considerable sprinkle of st.u.r.dy prejudices, no little self-a.s.sertion and pugnacity. But there is no real disparity. The style is the man here as ever. When roused by opposition he could even in converse show the claws beneath the velvet.

Only the militant, the more aggressive side of the man is expressed more readily in his writings. And the gentle and amiable side more readily in personal intimacy. Both the life and the writings are wanted to supply a complete picture.

In one respect the records of his life efface a suspicion that haunts the reader of his works. More than once the reader is apt to speculate as to how far the arrogance that marks certain of his essays is a superficial quality, a literary trick; how far a moral trait. The record of his conversations tends to show that much of this was merely surface. Unlike Coleridge, unlike Carlyle, he was as willing to listen as to talk; and he said many of his best things with a delightful unconsciousness that they were especially good. He never seemed to have the least wish to impress people by his cleverness or aptness of speech.

But when all has been said as to the personality of the man as expressed in his writings-especially his _Confessions_, and to his personality as interpreted by friends and acquaintances-there remains a measure of mystery about De Quincey. This is part of his fascination, just as it is part of the fascination attaching to Coleridge. The frank confidences of his _Confessions_ hide from view the inner ring of reserve, which gave a strange impenetrability to his character, even to those who knew and loved him best. A simple nature and a complex temperament.

Well, after all, such personalities are the most interesting of all, for each time we greet them it is with a note of interrogation.

III GEORGE BORROW

"The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening Paradise."

GRAY.

"He had an English look; that is was square In make, of a complexion white and ruddy."

BYRON.

I

Why is it that almost as soon as we can toddle we eagerly demand a story of our elders? Why is it that the most excitable little girl, the most incorrigible little boy can be quieted by a teaspoonful of the jam of fiction? Why is it that "once upon a time" can achieve what moral strictures are powerless to effect?

It is because to most of us the world of imagination is the world that matters. We live in the "might be's" and "peradventures." Fate may have cast our lot in prosaic places; have predetermined our lives on humdrum lines; but it cannot touch our dreams. There we are princes, princesses-possessed of illimitable wealth, wielding immeasurable power.

Our bodies may traverse the same dismal streets day after day; but our minds rove luxuriantly through all the kingdoms of the earth.

Those wonderful eastern stories of the "Flying Horse" and the "Magic Carpet," symbolize for us the matter-of-fact world and the matter-of-dream world. Nay, is there any sound distinction between facts and dreams? After all-

"We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

But there are dreams and dreams-dreams by moonlight and dreams by sunlight. Literature can boast of many fascinating moonlight dreams-Ancient Mariners and Christabels, Wonder Books and Tanglewood Tales. And the fairies and goblins, the witches and wizards, were they not born by moonlight and nurtured under the glimmer of the stars?

But there are dreams by sunlight and visions at noonday also. Such dreams thrill us in another but no less unmistakable way, especially when the dreamer is a Scott, a William Morris, a Borrow.

And dreamers like Borrow are not content to see visions and dream dreams, their bodies must partic.i.p.ate no less than their minds. They must needs set forth in quest of the unknown. Hards.h.i.+ps and privations deter them not. Change, variety, the unexpected, these things are to them the very salt of life.

This untiring restlessness keeps a Richard Burton rambling over Eastern lands, turns a Borrow into the high-road and dingle. This bright-eyed Norfolk giant took more kindly to the roughnesses of life than did Hazlitt and De Quincey. Quite as neurotic in his way, his splendid physique makes us think of him as the embodiment of fine health. Illness and Borrow do not agree. We think of him swinging along the road like one of Dumas' l.u.s.ty adventurers, exhibiting his powers of horsemans.h.i.+p, holding his own with well-seasoned drinkers-especially if the drink be Norfolk ale-conversing with any picturesque rag-tag and bob-tail he might happen upon. There is plenty of fresh air in his pages. No thinker like Hazlitt, no dreamer like De Quincey; but a shrewd observer with the most amazing knack of ingratiating himself with strangers.

No need for this romancer to seek distant lands for inspiration. Not even the villages of Spain and Portugal supplied him with such fine stuff for romance as Mumper's Dingle. He would get as strange a story out of a London counting-house or an old apple-woman on London Bridge as did many a teller of tales out of lonely heaths and stormy seas.

_Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ are fine specimens of romantic autobiography. His life was varied enough, abounding in colour; but the Vagabond is never satisfied with things that merely happen. He is equally concerned with the things that might happen, with the things that ought to happen. And so Borrow added to his own personal record from the storehouse of dreams. Some have blamed him for not adhering to the actual facts. But does any autobiographer adhere to actual facts? Can any man, even with the most sensitive feeling for accuracy, confine himself to a record of what happened?

Of course not. The moment a man begins to write about himself, to delve in the past, to ransack the storehouse of his memory; then-if he has anything of the literary artist about him, and otherwise his book will not be worth the paper it is written on-he will take in a partner to a.s.sist him. That partner's name is Romance.

As a revelation of temperament, the _Confessions_ of Rousseau and the _Memoires_ of Casanova are, one feels, delightfully trustworthy. But no sane reader ever imagines that he is reading an accurate transcript from the life of these adventurous gentlemen. The difference between the editions of De Quincey's _Opium Eater_ is sufficient to show how the dreams have expanded under popular approbation.

Borrow himself suggests this romantic method when he says, "What is an autobiography? Is it a mere record of a man's life, or is it a picture of the man himself?" Certainly, no one carried the romantic colouring further than he did. When he started to write his own life in _Lavengro_ he had no notion of diverging from the strict line of fact. But the adventurer Vagabond moved uneasily in the guise of the chronicler. He wanted more elbow-room. He remembered all that he hoped to encounter, and from hopes it was no far cry to actualities.

Things might have happened so! Ye G.o.ds, they _did_ happen so! And after all it matters little to us the exact proportion of fact and fiction.

What does matter is that the superstructure he has raised upon the foundation of fact is as strange and unique as the palace of Aladdin.